Katie Daubs will make the trip home to Forest Sept. 14 with her first book, The Missing Millionaire.

The Book Keeper book store and the Forest Museum are hosting a free event that day at the Kineto Theatre at 2 p.m. to celebrate the release of the Toronto Star reporter’s book about the mysterious disappearance in 1919 of Toronto theatre tycoon Ambrose Small.

Daubs grew up in Forest, where she went to St. John Fisher Catholic school and North Lambton secondary before leaving for university and a career in journalism.

Daubs said she and her parents wanted to celebrate the book somehow in Forest.

“I love my hometown,” she said. “I feel fortunate to have grown up where I did and have all the people helping me along the way.”

With the support and encouragement of her teachers, one of Daub’s internship’s was as a high school student writing for The Standard, the hometown weekly newspaper she still subscribes to.

Her former high school history teacher, David McLean, suggested holding an event for the book at the Kineto, the historic movie house in Forest’s downtown owned and run by the local Kiwanis Club.

“I went to so many movies there as a kid. I love that place,” Daubs said.

The Kineto dates back to 1917, “which is about the same era as my book,” she said.

“I just thought it was a perfect connection.”

Daubs said she’s grateful the Kiwanis Club agreed to the idea, adding the theatre offers “a little better seating than my mom’s backyard,” which was the initial plan.

Daubs was working on an assignment several years ago when she first heard the story of Small, the owner of Toronto’s Grand Opera House, and the mystery about his disappearance after closing a million-dollar-deal to sell his network of Ontario theatres.

“The more I read about Ambrose Small and the mystery, the more I realized it couldn’t really be contained in the typical stories I write for the Star,” she said.

Instead, it became the subject of her first book, which is being published by Penguin Random House and goes on sale Sept. 10.

The Missing Millionaire: The True Story of Ambrose Small and the City Obsessed With Finding Him, goes on sale Sept. 10. It was written by Katie Daubs, who grew up in Forest. The book’s release will be celebrated Sept. 14 at 2 p.m., at a free event at the Kineto Theatre in Forest being hosted by The Book Keeper and the Forest Museum.Handout

The story of Small’s disappearance held Toronto’s attention for decades, with a cast of characters that included his wife, his longtime secretary, his sisters and others.

“I was so drawn to the story because, first of all, I love a good mystery, and I love the city’s history,” Daubs said.

Stories written following Small’s disappearance described him as mean, petty and ruthless.

“If he had been nicer, a theatre critic once said, maybe they would have looked harder for him,” Daubs wrote in the book’s preface.

During the two-and-a-half years she worked on the book, Daubs interviewed descendants of those involved in Small’s life and the mystery, and she spent time going through archives.

That included visiting a theatre archive in New York that holds some of Small’s business correspondence from between 1905 and the First World War.

“You see how he operates, and how he snaps at people and how he’s always trying to get a good deal,” Daubs said. “By the time he disappears, everyone says he’s such an evil guy and nobody likes him.”

That was a change from newspaper stories she found from earlier in Small’s life describing him as well-liked, she said.

In the 1930s, two boys found some of Small’s possessions in a dump, including a day book holding clippings he had saved of articles from that earlier time when he was well regarded.

“I just felt that was really telling, and gave me more of a picture of him than what was out there,” Daubs said. “The details that made him more human to me were the ones that were really worth finding.”